Saturday, 26 March 2016

Somewhere, on a shelf, I have a
really interesting book that is not about wargaming, but in fact, about some
aspect of my professional work. The book is ‘The Mythical Man Month’ by Fred
Brooks. Brooks was the project manager for the development of the IBM 360
operating system in the 1960’s, and the book is the fruit of reflection on that
experience.

There are a number of things that
I could say about the tome. While we might expect it to be horrendously out of
date, it is not. The problems remain, even if the technology has moved on. One
point that Brooks makes is that adding extra people to a project that is
already behind schedule does not speed it up, no matter what managers might
expect. The time taken out of the existing worker’s effort to train and bring
up to speed the new personnel means that, counter-intuitively, adding people to
a running, if late, project, slows it down further. From my observation at
work, this is still true today.

Another point Brooks makes is
that there is no silver bullet. Here he is referring to the slaying of monsters
in myth and fairy story. A monster has, to fair things up, a weakness. In the
case of werewolves and the like, they could be slain by a bullet made of silver.
A lot of time, both in research and development, is spent looking for the
silver bullet that will solve the problems. Brooks’ argument is that there is
no such thing, no big idea or techniques that will slay the monster in one go. Again,
as I watch some senior managers jump onto the latest bandwagon that will sort
out the problem in the organisation, I realise that Brooks knew what he was
talking about.

So, in all this, where is the
wargaming content?

We all have them, those good
ideas that are now stowed away at the back of the cupboard, or hidden in the
wargame cave. Those projects we were all excited about, that filled our dreams
and imaginations with expectation, and caused us to switch every effort across
to that project rather than the one which was ongoing. And, eventually, sooner
or later, it just becomes too much, we get too frustrated, the new becomes old
and we go chasing after the next bright shiny thing.

How do projects get delayed? This
is another of the questions that Brooks asks and tries to answer. The
expectation is that some spectacular event destroys the whole thing. The engines
of our innovative spaceship will not provide enough power for lift-off. War
breaks out so we cannot finish our nifty design for a transporter machine. Or
something like that. Some spectacular event or failure means the project
collapses.

Brooks
argues that this view is incorrect. Projects,
in fact, get delayed one day at a time. There usually is no spectacular event,
no awful oversight that means that a project collapses suddenly and definitively.
There is a gradual chipping away at the project trajectory and its achievements
until it is so late that it gets abandoned. So, for example, a key milestone
gets delayed because the person delivering the final part is off sick. No
problem, everyone things, it is nearly there and it will only be a day or two. The
project schedule slips a bit, but it can be caught up easily when Bill is back.

Then,
of course, it happens again. Perhaps Wilma is off on a course for a week, and
so another bit gets delayed. Again, no problem, Wilma will be back and will
sort it out, probably more quickly because she’s just learnt all this stuff to
do things faster. But still, the project is delayed by a week and somehow the
time never quite gets caught up.

As I
have been painting my way through these tiny ships, I have noted, in microcosm,
these problems. One weekend I had a cold, and did not feel up to painting. No
problem, it is only a week. My schedule (a pretty feeble one, I admit) was to
paint ten ships a week for fifteen weeks and then I would be finished. A week
does not matter in the scheme of things. It is, after all, only finishing at
the end of April rather than the middle.

But
then as a result of the cold I had some breathing difficulties, being an
asthmatic. Now I can paint in these circumstances, but the medicines make me a
bit shaky, and so painting, especially small things, is a bit harder and so for
another week I did not do any. And so it goes. The project was delayed, not
spectacularly, not because I no longer want huge fleets of tiny boats, but one
week at a time.

The
problem then is that if we do not see some progress, we (or at least I) tend to
give up. I decide that the project will never be finished, and raising a
paintbrush will not achieve anything. So I stop. The toys are consigned to the back
of the cupboard, and my executors will find a whole bunch of shiny toys that
only express discouragement and frustration.

I wish I
had a pearl or two of wisdom as to how to get out of this, but I do not. I can
only recommend reading Brooks’ book and, if possible, leaving it around so that
any passing manager can steal it. As far as wargaming projects go, I can only
suggest setting small, achievable milestones, like painting ten small boats a
week.

Saturday, 19 March 2016

I have been reading (in truth, I have
just started) ‘Song of Wrath’ by J. E. Lendon (2010: basic Books, NY). It is
subtitled ‘The Peloponnesian Wars Begin’ so you have a fair warning of the
content. As you would except, there is a fair bit about Thucydides, what he
wrote and how he wrote it. Lendon is also somewhat sceptical about the reason
that Thucydides put forwards about why the wars began.

Thucydides’ argument is that
Sparta and Athens went to war because the Spartans feared the increasing power
of Athens. Athens accepted war because she wanted to become the hegemon of
Greece, as Sparta was accepted to be. Lendon, however, wants to, at least,
nuance this, and examine the reasons why Greek states went to war.

Lest this be considered
uninteresting, particularly to wargames, let me make a few further points.
Firstly, Lendon observes that the idea of hegemon also applied to personal
relationships, at least among the aristocracy, in Greece. You knew your place
in a hierarchy. Thus, Lendon quotes an amusing story about Pericles going about
his daily business, being constant abused by a poor man. As the poor man was so
much lower in the social order than Pericles, the abuse had no impact and, at
the end of the day, Pericles directed one of his servants to escort the poor
man to his home. If the poor man had been nearer Pericles in status, then war,
or at least court cases, would have ensued.

The idea of status in personal
relations, then, is an important one in motivating the Greeks for fight. You
fought, you fought with courage, and you fought to do, hopefully, just a bit
better than your slightly higher status neighbours, to inch your way up the
social status just a little. Of course, desperate acts of daring could achieve
the same effect, only more so, but they were rare (and tended to be a bit
fragile in their effects). Your true motivation was to do a bit of social
climbing.

As with individuals, so with
states. A state far below you in status was ignorable, no matter what it tried
to do. Thus, for many years, Sparta ignored the provocations of Athens because
Sparta was the hegemon and Athens should pick on some other state of similar
size and weight. It was only as Athens organised the Delian league 9and creamed
off the profits) that the Spartans started to take notice.

What happened next is a matter of
historical record. After much warfare with occasional peace, the Athenians were
defeated and the Spartans confirmed in their role as arbiter of the Greeks. However,
the constant warfare, among other factors, had weakened the Spartans and they
fell to the Thebans, and so on, along the line of whoever was receiving Persian
money. There is a good argument for suggesting that the Persians were the
winners of the Peloponnesian wars.

An interesting aspect of this
account is how Thucydides is read. Lendon notes in his introduction that US
strategists, in the Cold War, read Thucydides as an account of a maritime
democracy in conflict with a continental tyranny. There are no prizes for
guessing which side in the Cold War was identified with which. The mistake that
the Cold War scholars identified in Athenian policy was that, while the city
itself might have been a democracy, its allies were, in fact, more or less
subjects. The Delian league, under the leadership of Athens, moved from being an
alliance against the Persians to being a prop to Athenian pretensions to
hegemony. Athens was a democratic
tyrant.

As a consequence of this, the
members of the Delian league were, under some circumstances, happy to change
sides. One by one they were detached from the league, or defeated in detail
while the Athenians were otherwise occupied. This is an example, I think, of Paul
Kennedy’s idea of ‘imperial overstretch’ (in his ‘Rise and Fall of the Great
Powers’, a book well worth reading if you have not already). If Thucydides
bothered US Cold War strategists – the continental tyranny in fact won the
Peloponnesian war – the Kennedy’s book really upset them, for it proposes that
no empire can, seriously, maintain and advance its interests indefinitely, and
that in a major war of alliances, the side with the last dollar wins.

The most important thing that
Lendon proposes is that in the status of states, some battles did not need
fighting. The Spartans, as at Megara in 424 BC, could simply turn up and offer
battle. The Athenians, who were never as comfortable on land as the Spartans,
could accept or refuse. If they accepted, and, quite likely lost, their status
would not rise. If they refused, then their status would drop, or at least the Spartans
would be confirmed as hegemon. As the Athenians were rather sensitive about
losing men in battle, often the battle was refused. For the Athenians, naval
power was the source of their strength, and losing men in land combat only
weakened the fleet.

Throughout history there are
examples of battles that did not happen. At the start of the Hundred Years War,
for example, Edward III tried quite hard to get the French to fight a battle,
and they refused. In a similar way to the Greeks, I think, the French idea was
simply to get Edward off their territory. There was no need to assert their
superiority by fighting, they could just sit there until the English went away.
I dare say that similar sorts of episodes litter the pages of our history textbooks.

As Lendon notes, the idea of
honour tied up with this one of hegemon is possibly more pertinent to current
events than we like to think, and the emotion which is also present is a bigger
factor in international affairs than is usually credited. And, of course, the
problem for western powers is how to exercise their hegemony when challenged by
much smaller, ideologically driven rivals. But now I am digressing from
wargaming, so I shall stop.

Saturday, 12 March 2016

As I am sure I have often,
possibly too often, mentioned, there is a tranche of wargamers whose approach to
the game is simply to play waqrgames. I do not have a particular problem with
that; wargaming is, after all, a hobby, a leisure activity from which we can
detach the mundane, day to day existence which we all, in the West, at least,
have to put up with.

I only have a problem with this ‘just
play’ approach when it seems to hit some ethical and / or authentic problem. By
this I mean the historical wargamer whose French Napoleonic is entirely made up
of Imperial Guard units, or the World War Two wargamer whose German army
consists of SS units and more Panther tanks than were ever produced. At some
level, really, I do not have a problem with even this. After all, so long as it
is not illegal, immoral or fattening, whatever people choose to do in the
privacy of their own homes is up to them.

However, I do start to doubt
whether such armies, and the wargamers who produce them, can still claim to be ‘historical’
wargames. Armies of the constitution I have just mentioned might be based on
some sort of historical precedence, but they did not exist in history. I start
to suspect that we have, in these sorts of wargame armies, an example of what
is called in roleplaying games ‘munchkins’. By this I mean those rather
immature role playing gamers who try to maximise the effectiveness of their
character by buying every super weapon, gory torturing machines or whatever
simply to win, rather than to play a game. We could possibly add to this to
occasional wargamer with Emperor-Hero worship traits as well.

I am sure we have all done this. Army
lists, after all, are largely produced firstly to permit this sort of
munchkin-ness and secondly to prevent a medieval French army from consisting entirely
of (for example) Regular Kn(S). For the sake of balance, it does have to be
said that under most rules such an army is unlikely to win much, but many, many
people do go out to try to maximise the fighting power of their forces.

I dare say that there are two
responses to this. The first is ‘I don’t do that’, which is highly laudable. I
know that some readers prefer to play armies that are usually rated as poor
performers, like Napoleonic Turks. I think this is a fine example of some
wargamers, at least, treating the hobby as an opportunity for having some fun
using history, rather than as an opportunity to win at all costs. More power to
your paintbrushes.

The second response is to say ‘so?’
For example, competition gamers of a serious nature (and they do exist) can
argue that all they are trying to do is to maximise their opportunity to win
given a set of constraints imposed by the rules and army lists. This is fair
enough. Wargaming often comes down to a game of resource management, and the
soldiers on the table are one of the prime resources. This is not to say that
we could not accuse such players of munchkin-ness, of course, but it is a
relevant response given the nature of wargame competitions.

The thing that does vaguely
concern me about all of this is something which, for want of a better word,
could be referred to as ethics, as I did above. Fielding a WW2 German army that
is all SS units and Panther tanks (I admit, I am exaggerating for effect) seems
to be to be a bit of an insult to those people who had to face such forces in
real life. I am not saying that such units should not be represented on the
wargame table if the historically based games warrants them, but it does leave
me feeling a little uneasy.

Again, I am probably showing my
ignorance of World War Two history and wargaming. I am sure that there are good
wargames to be had from the period, and also that the armies involved are as
far away from munchkin armies as can be. Nevertheless, it is a spot within
wargaming which I do pick away at, as regular readers (if there are any) are
probably painfully aware.

I do not think that this unease
should go away with other periods. After all, we could say that medieval
wargamers who favour the HYW English army are only reproducing a force which
was a political instrument (are all armies not so?) and which engaged in a fair
amount of looting and so on along the way. That is true; does it mean then that
we cannot reproduce any army that fought anything other than a defensive war?

It is certainly true that WW2 has
a particular hold on the popular imagination. When I was a child there were
many war comics; we even had them at school (wouldn’t be allowed now, I dare
say). The only role of the German soldiers in most of them was to should ‘Himmel!’
from time to time and ‘Aieee’ when the heroic defenders of freedom shot them.
There was no moral ambiguity; the idea of a ‘Good German’ did not, so far as I
recall, form part of the narrative. That said, would not a similar
consideration apply to all other wars? Was there ever such a person as a ‘Good
Assyrian?’

It seems to me, then, that
wargaming is trapped in an odd sort of moral ambiguity. We want to represent
forces as accurately as possible (and reduce the munchkin effect along the
way), and yet we have to admit that all sides in a conflict may be morally
unacceptable (this does not apply to WW2, I think, as the atrocities carried
out by the German and Japanese forces were in a moral class of their own, far
removed from those of the Western allies). War can be a highly moral act, at
least within some parameters, but only for one side.

Can a wargame, therefore, be a
similar sort of moral act? As World War Two slips from the memory of all but
the oldest of the population, is a WW2 wargame, say of the storming of Berlin,
moral or not? If it isn’t, is a wargame based, say, on the siege of Jerusalem
in 70 AD a moral act? If there is a difference, why is there a difference? Is
it just the passage of time?

Maybe I should take a leaf from
David Hume’s book and, when he had more or less proved to himself that he didn’t
exist, went for a game of backgammon to remind himself that he did. Maybe I should
go an play a wargame to remind myself that it is fun.

Saturday, 5 March 2016

I mentioned last time how I find
wargame shows slightly discouraging. Part of that, I think, is the rather
similar language that I have heard at every show since I was, well, not quite a
nipper, but since my parents could trust me not to get lost or kidnapped.

It is not a specific language
that disheartens me, but a use of concepts and ideas which are very general. So,
for example, I have heard one wargamer, enthused by some new models, say to
another ‘Aren’t those Waffaduet infantry lovely?’ His colleague replies along
the lines ‘Yes, but under army list N or rules M, they only count as irregular
infantry, minor weapons, scarperers, so they are not worth anything.’ Or words
to that effect.

I am not trying to change either
the wargamer or his colleague. Each, after all, to their own. But the language
of wargaming is such that these sorts of
generalisations are a problem. Under rules M, the Waffaduvet might be fairly useless,
but there seems, to say the least, a bit of a lack of critical thinking going
on here. What evidence, for example, is there that the author of rules M is
correct in their assessment of the Waffaduvet infantry? To simply accept the
author’s assessment is, of course, the line of least resistance, but does not
say a lot for the wargamer’s independent thinking.

I have noted before that very
general sets of rules have their place, but should not be mistaken for sets of
rules that actually aim to reproduce warfare from a certain time and place.
History has not confined all troops to fit into certain categories for the
convenience of wargamers. Nor, incidentally, has history created a nice points
system to add up the relative strengths of the troops on each side to create a
nice, balanced game. History in general and generals in particular, are not
searching for nice balanced battles where either side can win.

But to listen to some of the
language that wargamers use, you might be forgiven supposing that all troops
armed with a pointy stick could be classified as ‘spearmen’, or that Napoleon
and Wellington disposed of 400 army points worth of troops at Waterloo, only to
have their nice even match disturbed by those pesky Prussians. It is also
possible that wargamers might believe (or at least argue) that Napoleon or
Hitler could have conquered Russia, if only the winter had held off a bit
longer.

This latter point has two
responses, of course. The first is that it is possible that either could have conquered
Russia, but the nature of that probability has to be understood. Like winning a
national lottery, the chances are remote, but non-zero. Of course, being human
and therefore irrepressibly optimistic, a non-zero chance is still a chance,
isn’t it? Taking a leaf from my thermodynamics days, there is a chance that all
the molecules in the room you are sitting in will be gathered into the corner
furthest from you. Fortunately for your ability to breathe air, that chance is
tiny, albeit non-zero. Napoleon conquering Russia is, possibly, slightly higher
than that, but is still, in absolute terms, pretty near ‘not going to happen’.

The other comment of course is
Monty’s ‘Third Law of Warfare’: don’t start a land war in Asia.

Of course, we can argue quite successfully,
that as wargamers were are not interested in this grand scale of things. We can
focus on (as Ruraigh suggested) much smaller level encounters and still enjoy
wargames. And that is, of course, right. Most companies of infantry in Russia
were not really interested in the grand play of strategy, but just wanted to
survive this battle, find some food, not get shot for desertion, look after
their buddies and get home safely. This is, perhaps, the human focus that as
humans ourselves, we can understand. After all, the great epics of literature
develop their themes by placing individuals in the sweep of history. This is
the case in, for example ‘The Lord of the Rings’ as well as, I believe ‘War and
Peace’. The prevalence of human interest stories in the news could be produced
as further evidence.

So, we come back to language, or
at least, that part of language which holds the tension between the human and
the big picture. Do we speak of the decisions of generals in throwing that
brigade against that fortification? Do we speak of the struggles and sufferings
of the men of that platoon as they struggle towards the target which has been
assigned to them by a remote authority? It would seem that we cannot do both.

We can, of course, drill down
through the layers. We can start with the big picture, the strategy, move from
there through the grand tactical, the tactical, the unit, the sub unit and
their activities and so on down to the individual and the hedge he is hiding
behind. But we do not seem to be able to, either logically or linguistically,
inhabit all these worlds at once. I can draw on the individual’s diary for
building a picture of the overall battle, but that individual has a limited
viewpoint and involvement with the bigger picture.

I suppose, then, that the
language of wargaming is stratified, and this perhaps explains why I have a bit
of difficulty with wargaming World War Two. In my stratification, a tank is a
major asset and should be represented as such on the table. This is a view from
the bottom. For a section of infantry under fire, a tank would be a major
asset. From above, the general’s view, a tank brigade is a major asset. The individual
vehicles are less so. From somewhere in the middle, of course, a squadron of
tanks might be the right level, or a tank of two could be detached to support
infantry under pressure.

And so I seem to have rambled my
way around to suggesting that what is, perhaps, most important is the language
we use to speak about wargaming. For ancient battles, I like to speak about
armies. For more recent conflicts I seem to like to talk about individuals. I
dare say that if I had the slightest idea way, I would have a far better
understanding of myself than I do.